-
Banned
Thunderbolt, I have many things very similar to this. My late maternal grandfather, flying missions over Japan in the B29, had several opportunities to get the Japanese POWs to do artwork on silk for him. All it cost was a pack of cigarettes each. I always wondered what the writing said as well.
-
Senior Member
Bump.
I really hope someone who can read this stuff will chime in.
-
Senior Member
Well, my wife spent about 30 minutes looking at it and Google Japan just now before giving up. Most of the smaller, fine characters seem to be names and possibly army ranks. It's definitely an army flag due to the appearance of the word "riku gun" (=Army) in a few places.
Here's a link to the Japanese army ranks. The navy ones are accessible from the same site.
Japanese Ranks
She could really only make out(be bothered to make ou) the larger bolder inscriptions.
The main one at the "top"( if you rotate the first image 90degrees clockwise) is a saying meaning roughly "Your life as a soldier will last long" / "You will survive for a long time as a soldier" i.e.Your number isn't quite up yet, soldier. It reads BU UN CHO KYU.
Taking the above slogan as the 'top' of the flag, the bottom left reads JIN CHU HO KOKU and means something like "Be very loyal to the country(emperor in this period)"
In the centre at the bottom, just two characters, is CHU SEI whch means "Loyalty".
The bold writing in the bottom right, reads TO JO HIDEKI SORI, or Tojo Hideki (is) Prime minister. I asked Maki if this means he did it and she said it would be strange to write another person's name. However, she has no idea about what the army do/did. Wonder if it actually was signed by the man himself? That would be worth checking out.
Just to the right of that, right in the corner, is what appears to be a rank or perhaps a unit or base designation. It seems to read "Riku gun To Ko Bun" but the writing is very hard to make out, not just due to the picture but to the actual writing itself. Besides that, looking up the meaning was complicated by the fact that the same kanji can be pronounced in several different ways, making searching the internet by the phonetic representation a bit tricky.
As mentioned above "rikugun" means Army. Maki's first thought was that the rest was a rank but later she thought it may be the location or, this was my uneducated guess, the unit. The kanji don't match the Japanese names for Kwajalein Atoll though.
That at least is a start. What would be handy is knowing some Japanese people who actually know something about the armed forces and the war. Most people don't which really adds to the difficulty of trying to work out what the kanji mean.
-
Senior Member
FlatSinMan, I can't tell you how grateful I am for this information. It really is helpful.
I can understand the lack of locational Kanji (i.e. something delineating Kwajalein Atoll) due to the fact the deployed units were similar to US units in that they were mostly kept in the dark until they were almost there, and typically these flags were signed before deployment.
Again, much thanks to you and Maki.
As I find out more, I'll be sure to pass it on.
TB
-
Senior Member
Do itashima****e.
(You're welcome
)
Any more questions, just ask.
-
Senior Member
Oh for gods sake, filter. Do itashimash i t e.